making things interact spring 09

Alex May and Christine Lee: Creepy Chalkboard

cal1cmu — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:06:02 +0000

Christine Lee: Stirling Engine

cal1cmu — Thu, 14 May 2009 14:57:09 +0000

This was supposed to mimic this. Alas, the movement of the twin stick was so jerky that I couldn’t imagine it actually working (especially because I was busy with mid-terms…).

Christine Lee: Jerking Coffin

cal1cmu — Thu, 14 May 2009 14:40:04 +0000

Arduino Sketch: Jerking_Coffin

How it would’ve worked:

When the lid of the coffin is on (photocell high), the coffin jerks the lid around (servo motor moving erratically); but when you open the lid (photocell value low), there’s nothing there but a thin slit at the bottom (servo motor stops moving). I got past the electronics and coding, but wasn’t able to begin the physical build up.

Video Demonstration (bad lighting)

Jim Toggweiler – Final Project

jimtoggweiler — Thu, 14 May 2009 13:47:07 +0000

beatBot

beatBot is a drum playing robot that responds positively to human interaction and attention by playing music for its users. The target user of the beatBot is anyone who enjoys hearing rhythmic music and would want a quirky machine that they could watch play it. beatBot’s users may choose to use beatBot for a variety of reasons – for musical entertainment, for playing other instruments with, for something to dance to at a party, or for viewing pleasure.

The beatBot plays three Roland PD-8 electronic drum pads, connected to the Roland drum synthesizer that they are made for. It uses six Hitec HS-322HD servos to drive six shortened drumsticks which play on the Roland pads. The music beatBot plays is written as code. By counting to some integer like 2750 (milliseconds) repeatedly, a function ‘beat’

which tells a particular servo to hit its drum once, can be run at the moment the arduino counts to certain percentages of that integer. This allows the tempo of the music to change depending on the ambient lighting in beatBot’s environment, which it reads using a photocell during setup. A rangefinder mounted to the front of beatBot looks for people walking by to play music for. When it does not sense a human presence, beatBot plays a very simple rhythm on one drum to invite people in the area to come check it out, upon seeing them, beatBot begins to play more impressive music.

Code for all three songs can be found in the video description on Vimeo.

Untitled from Jim Toggweiler on Vimeo.

Parts List.

¾”, 3/8”, ¼”

MDF/ 1/8″ acrylic for structure
3 Roland PD-8 dual trigger drum pads
Roland TD-3 drum synthesizer
6 Hitec HS-322HD servos
6 On-Stage 7A hickory drum sticks
Radioshack LDR
Rangefinder provided by class, not sure of make or model
Arduino
breadboard
jumper wire